LadyVivienne is a new virtual friend and blogmate. Her site is sumptuous — full of beautiful photo projects like this gorgeous self portrait and a delightful city girl/country girl photo journal. Vivienne is oh-so-close to me today, visiting her sister in my sister city of Portland. (Oh, if only I had a spare six hours to round trip it down there and bliss out on the crunchy granola goodness of that fine city! ) Thankfully, this fellow habituder comes to us for a virtual cup of chai as she share some thoughts about walking, breathing and being. Enjoy this deep breath of good air!

heart,

magpie
________________________________________________________

And now, a word from LadyV:

“I love when a simple act changes the way you function in the world, for the better. When I started going for a daily walk for this month’s habitude, I was curious to see if if it would be much different than my normal level of activity, as walking, biking and busing are the way I travel around my city. Each day I would try to make sure that I had gone on a 30 minute stroll and if I hadn’t, then I took an evening walk after dinner.

After about a week I noticed that something was missing in my daily life, something I will not miss. I stopped having that daily negative inner chatter that berated me for not being active enough. Going for a simple 30 minute walk has become an antidote to that negative voice that sits in the space between going for a run or sitting on the couch. It has stop speaking its harsh words. I am also finding it easier to go for a run on the days that I feel up to it, as its not a matter of success or failure anymore.

It reminds me of one of my favourite Veda Hille songs:

“Oh precious heart, you think you’re lost.
Look down and find your feet. The next step is the path you’re on”

You see, lately I am working hard at trying to reduce as much guilt, shame and negativity in my life as possible. As I go about this, my philosophy has been “deal with it or get rid of it” and with each small thing that I change, I’m finding it so much easier to take deep breaths in my daily life. Some of them are planned, and some snuck up on me, such as the way that walking daily makes me feel balanced and kicks my shame to the curb.

I hope to continue walking daily and keep that voice silenced and am curious to discover what other subtle changes I can make that will help each day be full of deep calm breaths.”

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 8:17 am and is filed under Soulstories.
Tags: guest post, Soulstories



You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.